It's a beautiful night. Sitting on a culvert at the end of a winding road, she watches people go by. A black and white film wherein all are walking away. Or are they walking towards? Maybe walking together. Or just walking. There's some emotion hanging in the air, palpable. Twirling a peepal leaf in her fingers, she tries to quelch the relfex - that immediate response of the brain: connecting the images, making 'meaning', making an audio visual out of asynchronous entities. Variables. The manhattan bull leaning against the phone booth, smoking. A cellphone ringing in the far corner of the hostel. The nice guy from her pol science class waiting in the shadows beneath a window for...what? She smiles.

Then she sees him walking towards her. A silhouette. Still, she could picture clearly the way his eyes would be - nonchalant. His whole stance was perpetually and purposefully nonchalant. Oh, he tries. He even succeeds to an extent. There's a sudden desperation in her to find the words... to describe, to capture, to reveal, to recognise. What? Him? The feeling? The attiude? How much can you emote through language? Yet, she searches. She gropes for words. Fails. But some, read long ago, are hovering within consciousness-

To make love with a stranger is the best.
There is no riddle and there is no test.

To lie and love, not aching to make sense
Of this night in the mesh of reference.

To touch, unclaimed by fear of imminent day,
And understand, as only strangers may.

To feel the beat of foreign heart to heart
Preferring neither to prolong nor part.

To rest within the unknown arms and know
That this is all there is; that this is so.

Vikram Seth, Unclaimed

This he is. Unclaimed.